“ARDENT AND INTELLIGENT.... TURNS IDEAS INTO THE BEST KIND OF ENTERTAINMENT.... It’s probably too much to hope that Ms. von Trotta and her star, Barbara Sukowa, will do for Arendt what Nora Ephron and Meryl Streep did for Julia Child, but surely a fellow can dream.... Contemplating one of the great lives of the 20th century.... There is an undeniable nostalgic thrill in stepping into an era in New York when philosophers lived in apartments with Hudson River views.... I would not hesitate to describe Hannah Arendt as an action movie, though of a more than usually dialectical type. Its climax, in which Arendt defends herself against critics, MATCHES SOME OF THE GREAT COURTROOM SCENES IN CINEMA.”—A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Margarethe von Trotta’s EXTRAORDINARY film...has managed to make THRILLING CINEMATIC DRAMA out of its protagonist’s lifelong engagement with ideas.”—Daphne Merkin, THE DAILY BEAST

“Barbara Sukowa’s performance in the title role is the kind that reverberates long after the screen goes black.”—Sheri Linden, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

“My guilty pleasure this week is Hannah Arendt. More than any other individual, she brought the culture of Weimar Jewish intellectuals to New York... Arendt’s report made ‘the banality of evil’ a world-renowned phrase and its author the most reviled Jewish thinker since Baruch Spinoza... (Barbara Sukowa delivers) a robustly physical performance. Hannah Arendt is ultimately a pleasure, because Sukowa plays the most forbidding of intellectuals as a fabulous, passionate doll. Sometimes clueless, sometimes kittenish, and always, always thinking, her Hannah is not only admirable but lovable.”—J. Hoberman, TABLET MAGAZINE

“The writer-philosopher Hannah Arendt is brought to life by a MESMERIZING Barbara Sukowa.”—Marsha McCreadie, THE VILLAGE VOICE

“Veteran German director Margarethe von Trotta...has perhaps her strongest film to date with Hannah Arendt.... Beautifully written and directed.... Von Trotta’s sober cinematic evocation of a non-thinker under the microscope of world-class thinker Arendt should solidly score with thinkers of all ages among the art-house crowd. (Non-thinkers have ample tentpoles for summer viewing.)”—Doris Toumarkine, FILM JOURNAL

“At last, a film about intellectuals, their world of ideas, conflicting philosophies and strong friendships that keeps us riveted to the screen.”—Emily S. Mendel, CULTURE VULTURE

“THE BEST MOVIE THIS CRITIC HAS EVER SEEN ABOUT THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A WRITER!.... German titan Margarethe Von Trotta’s magnificent meditation on the German-Jewish political theorist. Starring Barbara Sukowa as the title character, who lived a life few if any can match, it is major work, spartan, highly dramatic, and incredibly timely.”—Brandon Harris, FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

“Barbara Sukowa is magnetic as the great writer and philosopher. Seems like an impossible subject for film, yet even viewers who have never read a word of her books will be stirred by her intellectual and emotional courage in Sukowa’s award-worthy performance.”—Deborah Young, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“Sukowa proves a brilliant choice for the philosopher; she ‘does’ stillness about as well as any actress in cinema today, and her mobile face and flashing eyes suggest a powerful intelligence under the surface... The question of the nature of human evil, central to Arendt’s later work, is still with us, and the passage of time and free flow of innocent blood... suggests that Arendt was not wrong.”—George Robinson, THE JEWISH WEEK

“Barbara Sukowa’s climactic speech as the title character in Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt is perhaps the most significant speech ever put in the mouth of an actress.”—Rika Ohara, BLUEFAT

“As a film that takes politics and morality seriously, it is like nothing I have seen in a very long time.”—Louis Proyect, THE UNREPENTANT MARXIST

ARTICLES

THE WOMAN WHO SAW BANALITY IN EVIL
“Hannah Arendt’s (book) set off a storm like few books before or since. Among Upper West Side intellectuals it sparked, as the critic Irving Howe put it, ‘a civil war,’ siring vicious debates and souring lifelong friendships. It also sold more than 100,000 copies and reshaped the way people have thought about the Holocaust, genocide and the puzzle of evil ever since.”—Fred Kaplan, THE NEW YORK TIMES

LONELY THINKING: HANNAH ARENDT ON FILM
“Hannah Arendt accomplishes something rare in any biopic and unheard of in a half century of critical hyperbole over all things Arendt: it actually brings Arendt’s work back into believable – and accessible – focus.”—Roger Berkowitz, THE PARIS REVIEW

HANNAH ARENDT: THE BIG TWITTER WAR OF 1962
“In the early 1960s version of social media – the New York cocktail party – Hannah Arendt was the very hottest of trending topics, and subject to much the same kind of distortion, misapprehension and groupthink we so often encounter today.”—Andrew O’Hehir, SALON